


Stray

by JuliaM (seshat0120)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e01-02 Children of the Gods, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24576373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seshat0120/pseuds/JuliaM
Summary: A missing scene from Children of the Gods starting from the scene with Jack and Daniel in Jack's living room.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Stray

**Author's Note:**

> Words in italics are dialog from the episode Children of the Gods.

As he reached into the fridge to pull out two bottles of beer, a memory flashed through Jack’s mind. He was eight years old and standing in the kitchen clutching a skinny, muddy, bedraggled puppy and looking up at his mother with wide, pleading eyes. He remembered the words she’d said to him that day. “Jonny O’Neill, you can’t keep bringing home every stray you find.” Then she’d ruffled his hair affectionately and found something for the puppy to eat.

As he swung the refrigerator door shut, he did his best to suppress a chuckle as he thought about the man in his living room. “I’m still bringing home strays, Ma,” he thought as he made his way to the living room.

He was greeted by a sneeze from Daniel as he walked back into the living room. The younger man was staying as close to the fireplace as he could get without actually climbing in the thing. Personally, Jack thought it was a bit too warm for a fire, but he’d seen the way Daniel had been shivering. It would take him time to get used to not being in the hot desert.

 _“Nice catch,”_ Jack commented as Daniel wiped his nose with the tissue in his hand.

 _“Thank you. Sorry. Gate travel always seems to make my allergies...”_ Daniel started to say before blowing his nose and sniffling. _“Sorry,”_ he said again as he took the offered beer and uncapped it.

 _“So, you were saying...”_ Jack prompted as he moved to the sofa and sat down, uncapping his bottle of beer and tossing the cap onto the coffee table.

 _“Anyway,”_ Daniel continued what he’d been telling Jack, _“um...as soon as you were gone and they realized they were free, Abydos was...was their world for the taking...”_

 _“Had a little party, did you?”_ Jack asked.

 _“Oh yeah, big, big, party. They treated me like their savior. It was...um...embarrassing,”_ Daniel continued, looking chagrined as he related the way the Abydonians had treated him.

“ _Savior of Abydos? Doesn’t sound so bad.”_

 _“Yeah. I spent the first year having to stop everyone I saw from bowing all the time.”_ Clearly, Daniel hadn’t been comfortable being cast into the role of the worshipped savior.

 _“It’s amazing you turned out so normal,”_ Jack teased before taking a swig of the beer.

 _“Well, if it wasn’t for Sha’re, I’d probably...”_ Daniel trailed off, the pain in his eyes evident as he said his missing wife’s name. He exchanged a look with Jack, sat in the nearby armchair then continued in a more subdued tone. _“She was the complete opposite of everyone else. She practically fell on the floor laughing every time I tried to do some chore they all took for granted, like…um…grinding yuffeta flour. I mean, have you ever tried to grind your own flour?”_

 _“I’m trying to kick the flour thing,_ ” Jack deadpanned.

Daniel chuckled at the joke then looked at the beer bottle and took a drink from it. _“This is going straight to my head,”_ he said then took another swig. _“What time is it anyway? I must have Gate lag or something.”_

Jack recognized the change in subject for what it was - avoidance. Daniel wanted to avoid talking about what was causing him the most pain right now. Jack knew that kind of avoidance - had practiced it himself many times in the past - but didn’t call Daniel on it and, instead, offered the younger man something different to latch on to. _“Daniel, for crying out loud, you’ve had one beer. You’re a cheaper date than my wife was.”_

Daniel eagerly jumped on the subject that Jack had just offered. _“Yes, when am I going to meet your wife?”_ he asked looking around.

 _“Oh, probably, uh, never,”_ Jack answered hoping that he sounded normal. He saw the look of sympathy on Daniel’s face and glanced away from him. _“After I came back from Abydos the first time, she’d already left.”_

 _“I’m sorry,”_ Daniel murmured.

_“Yeah, so was I. I think in her heart she forgave me for what happened to our kid, she just couldn’t...forget.”_

Daniel took in the information then gently probed, _“And what about you?”_

 _“I’m the opposite,”_ Jack answered flatly. _“I’ll never forgive myself but sometimes I can forget.”_

“How do you do that?” Daniel asked softly.

Jack knew the question Daniel was really asking was ‘how do I do that?’. He put his bottle of beer down on the coffee table and leaned forward to catch Daniel’s eyes. “That’s not something you’re going to have to know, ok. We’re going to find Sha’re.”

“You don’t know that, Jack,” Daniel said giving into the helplessness he was feeling. 

Jack got up and squatted down in front of Daniel resting his hands on his knees. “Hey. Look at me.” He repeated the request again more firmly until Daniel raised his eyes to him. “I do know. We are going to find Sha’re and Skarra. You’re not going to lose your family, Daniel. You just have to trust me. Ok?”

Daniel stared into Jack’s eyes for a few seconds before nodding shallowly. “I trust you, Jack. I just…” he trailed off as he wrapped his arms around his midsection and doubled over. “God! It’s my fault. If I hadn’t unburied the gate…or if I’d taken her with me when I showed you the cartouche room. I wasn’t even there to try to stop it.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jack said firmly as he reached up to grasp Daniel’s shoulder. “None of what happened is your fault. You hear me?”

“I…” Daniel started to say before his eyes widened and he clamped a hand over his mouth. He looked around desperately until Jack got up, pulled him from the chair, and propelled him in the direction of the bathroom.

Jack stayed with him as everything he’d eaten since getting back to earth made a very sudden reappearance. “I guess pizza and beer probably wasn’t a good idea,” Jack murmured when the vomiting finally stopped. He wet a washcloth and handed it to Daniel to wipe his face then handed him a cup of water. “Here. Rinse your mouth and I'll go get you something to wear to bed."

Once he'd finished with the water, Daniel left the bathroom and followed the noises he was hearing to Jack's bedroom. "Sorry about that," he said as he leaned with his shoulder against the doorframe.

"Not a problem." Jack straightened from where he'd been looking in one of the lower drawers of the dresser. He handed Daniel a pair of navy flannel pajamas. "These should fit you. I'll show you where the spare room is."

He led Daniel down the hall a short distance, pushed open a closed door and turned on the light. "It's not much but it's better than the dorm rooms at the mountain."

Daniel followed Jack into the sparsely furnished room that looked like it was being used for storage. An unmade twin bed was pushed up against one wall with a small dresser at the foot of it. The opposite wall in the room was taken up by neatly stacked boxes. "It's ok," he said as he put the pajamas down on the bed then sat beside them. The adrenaline rush that had been sustaining him since they'd come back to the carnage in the pyramid on Abydos and he'd discovered that Sha're had been taken was draining out of him leaving him exhausted.

Daniel's sudden subdued state concerned Jack. He patted him gently on the shoulder. "Get changed and I'll round up some sheets for the bed."

Jack grabbed a set of mismatched sheets from the linen closet and a blanket. As he shut the closet door, he paused and swung it open adding another blanket to the pile. He had a feeling it was going to take Daniel a while to get used to being cold.

When he got back to the spare room, the pajamas were still on the unmade bed. Daniel was standing with his arms around himself by the window staring out of it, but Jack wasn't sure he was seeing what was outside. He had his glasses clutched in the hand that Jack could see.

Since he wasn't sure Daniel had heard him come back, he cleared his throat softly to get his attention.

At the soft noise, Daniel whirled around startled. When he caught sight of Jack, he quickly brushed his hand over his eyes then put his glasses back on.

“Grabbed an extra blanket for you,” Jack said trying to keep his voice matter of fact and give Daniel time regain his equilibrium. He picked up the pajamas and held them out to Daniel. “Take these and I’ll get the bed fixed up for you. There’s some clean towels in the bathroom if you want to take a shower.”

Daniel shook his head slightly. “I took one back at the mountain after they were done in the infirmary.” He took the pajamas from Jack’s outstretched hand. “I’ll just go and…” He trailed off almost uncertain of what he wanted to say and, instead, started to walk out of the room.

As he walked by, Jack snagged his arm and pulled him to a stop. “Hey…it’s ok, you know. We will find them.”

\---------------

Jack found himself hyper aware the whole night of the other person in the house. As upset as Daniel had seemed earlier, he expected it to somehow manifest in his sleep and he found himself keeping an ear out for any sounds of distress. It was almost earie how quiet the night had been.

He rolled over to look at the glowing numbers on the alarm clock - 4:09. He had just a little under two hours before the alarm would be going off and decided it was time to relax his vigilance. If Daniel's sleep were going to be disturbed, it would have happened already.

He rolled back over burrowing down in the blankets. Two hours of solid sleep was better than nothing.

He was just starting to drift off when the noises he'd been waiting for all night finally started. He waited a minute to see if Daniel would quiet, but when that didn't happen, he threw back the blankets and got out of bed.

He padded to the spare room and peeked in through the partially opened door. He saw Daniel reaching out and calling his wife's name.

He approached the bed and grasped his friend's shoulder giving it a little shake. "Wake up, Daniel. You're dreaming." It took a few more shakes before Daniel finally jolted awake.

"Easy. Easy," Jack soothed. "It's just me."

Daniel pushed up shakily to sit. He wiped his hands lover his face then leaned forward burying his face in his hands. "I couldn't reach her," he mumbled. "I kept trying to, but she kept getting further and further away." He dropped his hands to his lap and turned haunted eyes on Jack. "What if we can't find her?"

Jack eased down to sit on the side of the bed. He kept one hand on Daniel's shoulder rubbing gently. "We will, Daniel. You just need to hang on to that." He felt like he kept repeating himself but if that's what Daniel needed, then he'd keep on repeating.

"How, Jack?" Daniel half shouted. "We don't even know where they went. Do you know how many combinations of gate addresses there are? And then there's the...the...the..." he stuttered as he tried to remember the term Carter had used.

"Planetary shift," Jack supplied. "We'll figure something out."

Daniel gave Jack a small push then got up from the bed. He started pacing in the empty space in the room. "I need to be out there. I need to look for her." He stopped abruptly, getting in Jack's personal space. "You need to talk to the general. Make him understand I need to be out there. You need to make him listen."

Jack grasped the other man by both shoulder and gave him a quick shake. "You need to calm down. It doesn't matter what I say to Hammond if you go in all keyed up like this. You're not exactly on his favorite person list right now and, to be honest, I'm not too high up right now either. So, if you want to go back out there and look for Sha're, you need to calm down and you need to start acting rationally. You hear me?" He gave another little shake for emphasis.

"Ok. Ok," Daniel said in a soft voice. He pulled away from Jack and slumped on the edge of the bed. "I just...I feel so helpless."

Jack sat by him offering what support and comfort he could. "I know." He looked away remembering his own too recent times of feeling the same way. "Believe me, I know how that feels."

"So, what do I do?"

Jack heard so much in the simple question - fear, loss, confusion, and trust. Just from that simple question Jack was able to hear how much trust Daniel was placing in him to help find his wife and he found himself momentarily unsettled by it. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Right now, you go back to bed. There’s still almost two hours before we have to get up and head in. And after that…we’ll figure it out and we’ll get Shar’re back. Just trust me, Daniel.” Jack got up from the bed and pulled the blankets into some semblance of order.

“OK, Jack,” Daniel agreed as he lay back down. “I do trust you.”

Once Daniel was lying down, Jack pulled the blankets over him. He stayed by the bed for a few more minutes before going back to his room. He had a few hours before the meeting with Hammond. In that time, he had to figure out a damned good reason for Daniel to go back through the gate with him. He had a feeling that would probably be amongst the easier things he’d be doing in the next few days.


End file.
